Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
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Posted to Media on Sat Aug 16, 2008 at 12:28:33 PM EST (promoted by port1080). RSS.
Famous literary giant Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recently died. He was 89.
Remembered by Mikhail Gorbachev as "one of the first who spoke aloud about the inhuman Stalinist regime and about the people who experienced it but were not broken," the Russian writer had endured horrible trials and tribulations to have his materials published. Once a combat tested officer in the Russian military he was stripped of his rank and thrown into the horrific state prison system for writing a letter to a colleague that included negative comments about Stalin.
He served eight years in the Russian prison system, and was exiled internally to Kazakhstan. One book that gained him fame was One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch which was published during the glasnost of Nikita Khrushchev's years in office. The book detailed a single day in the life of a gulag prisoner and spread knowledge of the horrors of the soviet prison system throughout the world. He later won a Nobel Prize in Literature for this book and two others. He was not allowed to travel to Stockholm to receive the award, but was able to smuggle out his acceptance speech in advance of the ceremony.
His later work, The Gulag Archipelago, is one of the better pieces of literature of all time. The manuscript had to be smuggled out past the KGB who were under orders to find and suppress it. It describes his eight year stay in the dystopian Russian prison system as well as describes the stories of hundreds of others and is credited with bringing to an early end the cruelty of the communist regime. Human rights activists and leaders later recognized him as a "giant" because of this book which earned him expulsion from his own country. He moved to Vermont and published some books critical of Western ways. Years later he was allowed to return to Russia, restored to citizenship and honored.
Mr. Solzhenitsyn was married multiple times. He twice married and divorced one ex-wife. She died in 2003.
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